Get Ready Week... underway already

OK, so we're a bit early... that's typical of us though!

This year's theme for Get Ready Week (formerly known as Disaster Awareness Week) is tsunami. That fits nicely with the national tsunami exercise on the 20th October. New banners have been made for our AirShelter and a CDEM Group tsunami brochure prepared and printed. We've bought survival items to display in the AirShelter and have the new video interviews with Kiwis who survived the Samoa earthquake and tsunami last year.

Next thing you know, Canterbury have a massive earthquake and a significant civil defence response. Closer to home, we have more than our fair share of rain resulting in evacuations, flood gate operations and an awful lot of soggy ground! We've now operated the new Makino and Moutoa flood control gates twice in two weeks. I think its a good guess that people will have questions about earthquakes and floods while we are out there in the community.

To help answer some of the questions, we dusted off the earthquake cubes from a couple of years ago. Each cube in the display (numbered 4-8) represents the amount of energy released in an earthquake. The very small cube represents a Richter scale 4 event and the big cube a Richter scale 8. We'll also be printing off some more Makino brochures for the Fielding display.

The Get Ready Week roadshow is in the following places...

5-7 October Levin at Horowhenua District Council

8 October Feilding in the Square

11 October Taihape New World

12 October Marton New World and Ohakune District Council Service Centre

13 October Palmerston North in the Square

14 October Danevirke at the Warehouse

15 October Wanganui as part of the Health Wellbeing and Fitness expo at the Memorial Hall

Doing our bit to help

A few familiar faces from Palmerston North converged on the National Crisis Management Centre to assist in co-ordinating the response to the M7.1 earthquake in Canterbury. Braden Austin was called in to undertake the role of Lifeline Utility Coordinator, Jock Robinson in logistics support and me (Shane Bayley) in planning/intelligence support. I don't think Jock even knew I was taking his pic.

As it happened, we bumped into other (former and current) CEG members from the Manawatu-Wanganui CDEM Group... Murray Mills in his Ministry of Health role and Stewart Brown from NZ Defence Force.

I left the NCMC yesterday morning to return home because of flooding so it might not have been much, but every little bit helps I'm sure. Making a professional contribution and gaining experience during real events is an important part of participating in the sector.

West Coast Exercise ShakeOut

At 10:10 a.m. on Friday 18 September 2009, thousands of New Zealand West Coasters will participate in the regions largest earthquake drill ever! The purpose of the ShakeOut is to practice how to protect ourselves during earthquakes, and to get prepared at work, school, and home.

Everyone can participate - why not you? Check out the web site set up for this exercise here.

I think this is a great initiative and good luck to everyone on the Coast - check out the video they've had made - good job team!

Back on deck

Well, I've been away for a couple of weeks but the business just keeps on ticking!!!

The CEG agenda has gone out with the first draft of the CDEM Group Plan and Public Education and Information Strategy. We meet next week to work through these before they go up to the Joint Standing Committee.

On the hazards front, Ruapehu did a little belch. Fortunately, there was little effect from this event at the Crater Lake. GNS Science issued alert bulletin for this event. There was a pretty chunky earthquake down south but incredibly, very little damage. This event was as large as the 1931 earthquake! Anywhere else in the world, I'm sure there would have been an international response to a devastated area. Soon after the earthquake, a tsunami warning was issued by the PTWC. Again, we were lucky that a big wave was not generated. This one does bring home that the warning system is designed for distant source tsunami. It just takes time to work things out and then get plans initiated.

Finally, congratulations to members of the Volunteer Rural Fire Force in Levin. Many of the members graduated with their level 2 FRSITO certificates last night. Presentation of their certificates was made at a ceremony at the Horowhenua District Council by HDC Chief Execuitive David Ward and FRSITO Manager Leonce Jones.

Trembly Turangi

The Turangi-Tokaanu area seems to be going through a bit of a shaky time at the moment. A swarm of small earthquakes has been recorded over the past few weeks with events today ramping up slightly. The largest of these was this morning and measured M4.4. All the quakes seem to be quite shallow. The area is known for its geothermal activity and when we were up there a few weeks ago, steam was evident around this location.

Details of recent earthquakes can be found on the GeoNet website. I dumped a few of the locations of today's events into Google Earth just to see where things plot up. Note that some of the locations represent more than one event - one of the locations is where three of the events come back to (give or take a bit for rounding errors I guess).

Here is a link to the Get Ready Get Thru information for earthquakes.